Two-time Academy
Award-winner Meryl Streep is America’s most decorated actress. The
multitalented star has been nominated for 13 Oscars and 20 Golden Globes,
and she earned the prestigious American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement
Award in 2004. It’s little wonder that Diane Keaton has called her "my
generation's genius" and that Robert Redford has raved, “There's simply no
finer craftsman in the business. She's as good as it gets.”
" Integrate what you believe in every single area of your life. Take your
heart to work and ask the most and best of everybody else too."
At her age, Meryl Streep hasn’t lost any of the sex appeal that helped her
break into the industry -- at least, not according to her Prairie Home
Companion costar Lindsay Lohan, who raves about Streep: “She's actually
quite a sexy woman. Very coy and sexy."
According to Meryl herself, her sexiness has a lot to do with confidence. “I
like who I am now,” she says. “Other people may not. I'm comfortable. I feel
freer now. I don't want growing older to matter to me.”
Video: Meryl Streep - The winner
takes it all
It’s a reality that most Hollywood actresses live from paycheck to paycheck.
Meryl Streep, on the other hand, lives from Oscar to Oscar. The
Yale-educated actress has been nominated for 13 Academy Awards, winning
twice -- once in 1980 for Kramer vs. Kramer and again in 1983 for Sophie’s
Choice. Along the way, she’s also been nominated for 20 Golden Globes,
picking up statuettes for the previously mentioned films, as well as for
Adaptation where she worked with Nicolas Cage in 2002, and Angels in
America, starring Al Pacino, in 2004. Meryl’s impressive work has been
similarly honored with awards from the National Society of Film Critics, the
Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics Circle, the
British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the Australian Film Institute,
the Cannes Film Festival, the American Comedy Awards, and the People’s
Choice Awards.
In addition to her professional accomplishments, Meryl is also actively
involved with a number of charitable organizations, including The Harvard
Center for Health and the Global Environment, Hartford Food System, Equality
Now, the Academy of American Poets, and the Pediatric AIDS Foundation.
Mary Louise Streep was born on June 22, 1949, in Summit, New Jersey. Popular
and easygoing, she was a star cheerleader and the homecoming queen at
Bernardsville High School before enrolling at Vassar College in 1967. It was
there that she was bit by the acting bug after taking her first of many
drama classes. Professor Clinton Atkinson still recalls being blown away by
her early performances. "Her acting was hair-raising, absolutely
mind-boggling," he says. "I don't think anyone ever taught Meryl acting, she
really taught herself."
Following her graduation from Vassar in 1971, Meryl enrolled at the
prestigious Yale School of Drama. Once again, she took little time to set
herself apart from her classmates. According to fellow student Christopher
Durang, “Meryl was Yale's leading lady. The school recognized her remarkable
talent and worked her unmercifully.” Fortunately, the work paid off,
transforming Meryl into a seasoned performer by the time she received her
Masters in fine arts in 1975.
Equipped with her degree, Meryl instantly established herself in the
industry by landing coveted roles on stage in Arthur Miller's A Memory of
Two Mondays and Tennessee Williams' 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, for which she
received the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Theater World Award and a Tony
nomination.
Having become one of New York’s hottest young actresses, Meryl expanded into
television with roles in Secret Service (1977), The Deadliest Season (1977)
and Holocaust (1978), a riveting mini-series for which she won her very
first Emmy. Meryl also received her first of 13 Oscar nominations later that
year when she starred in The Deer Hunter with Robert De Niro, a brutal look
at the lasting effects of the Vietnam War.
In addition to being a big year professionally, 1978 was a big year on the
personal front for Meryl, as she married prominent sculptor Don Gummer on
September 15, 1978. The happy couple had their first child, Henry, a year
later.
Meryl truly cemented her reputation as America’s most promising young
actress in 1979 when she starred in The Seduction of Joe Tynan and Woody
Allen’s Manhattan. As impressive as those two performances may have been,
they were ultimately overshadowed by her tour-de-force role in Kramer vs.
Kramer (1979), for which she won Best Supporting Actress Awards from the
Academy Awards, the Golden Globes, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association,
the New York Film Critics Circle, and the National Society of Film Critics.
Tired of playing contemporary roles, Meryl asked her agent to find her
something challenging. "I said to [him], 'I've got to do something outside
of Manhattan, outside of 1981, outside of my experience," she recalls. "Put
me on the moon, I want to be someplace else. I want to be held in the
boundaries of a different time and place." Meryl got her wish with 1981’s
The French Lieutenant’s Woman, a lavish period piece set in 19th-century
England. In addition to satisfying Meryl’s needs, the film also satisfied
critics, who awarded her Best Actress statuettes from the British Academy of
Film and Television Arts, the Golden Globes and the Los Angeles Film Critics
Association.
Not content to rest on her laurels, Meryl turned in another dazzling
performance in Sophie’s Choice (1982). Her role as a Nazi concentration camp
survivor ultimately netted her a second Oscar, as well as a slew of Best
Actress honors from the National Society of Film Critics, the Golden Globes,
the New York Film Critics Circle, and the Los Angeles Film Critics
Association.
Now free to pick and choose her projects, Meryl appeared in a string of
critically acclaimed films over the next decade, including Silkwood (1984)
starring Cher, Out of Africa (1985), A Cry in the Dark (1988), and Postcards
from the Edge (1990). The decade was also punctuated with the births of
three more children, as Meryl and Don gladly welcomed Mary Willa Gummer,
Grace Jane Gummer and Louisa Jacobson Gummer into the world.
Despite the incredible success she enjoyed during the previous two decades,
Meryl’s career began to decline during the early ‘90s due to a lack of
quality roles. Luckily, she bounced back in a big way in 1995 with The
Bridges of Madison County, a powerful romance starring Clint Eastwood. The
intimate role put Meryl back in the spotlight once again with Best Actress
nominations from the Academy Awards, the Screen Actors Guild and the Golden
Globes.
Additional Academy Award nominations came in 1999 for One True Thing
starring Renee Zellweger and in 2000 for Music of the Heart. Indeed, the new
millennium has been kind to Meryl, who has starred in blockbuster hits such
as The Hours (2002) alongside Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman, The
Manchurian Candidate (2004) with Denzel Washington and Lemony Snicket's A
Series of Unfortunate Events (2004) with Jim Carrey.
That output, coupled with her previous accomplishments, led to the American
Film Institute honoring her in 2004 with its 32nd Life Achievement Award.
Trustee chair Howard Stringer summed up her career accomplishments nicely
during the event’s gala ceremony when he said, “Her talent, range and
determination to master her craft bring out performances that sometimes
border on the ethereal. In that sense, she is truly peerless.”
Sehr
Farrukh
